1. Field of the Invention
An LED heat sink apparatus.
2. Description of the Prior Art
LED heat sink apparatuses are known in the art for containing LED's while preventing the LED's from overheating. One such LED heat sink apparatus is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 8,123,381 to Donald Lee Wray. The heat sink apparatus includes a housing that is disposed about an axis and defines a chamber. The housing includes a side wall that extends axially between a closed end that closes the chamber and an open end that opens the chamber. A lens is coupled with the closed end of the housing. A downward platform is connected with the side wall in the chamber to define a bottom cavity of the chamber between the downward platform and the lens, and a central cavity of the chamber between the downward platform and the closed end of the housing. A plurality of LED's are coupled with the downward platform in the bottom cavity for emitting light through the lens. The downward platform defines a plurality of holes for passing air that has been heated by the LED's from the bottom cavity to the central cavity.
Additionally, U.S. Pat. No. 8,083,374 to Chen et al. discloses an LED heat sink apparatus which includes a sealing assembly that seals a lens to an open end of a housing to seal a chamber.
However, such LED heat sink apparatuses suffer from certain disadvantages either because they rely on the housing being open to the surrounding atmosphere to cool the housing, which can leave components contained internal to the housing prone to damage due to exposure to external elements, or in the case of sealed assemblies, they rely on complex, inefficient, and/or costly means of cooling the housing. Accordingly, there remains a need for an improvement to efficiently cool LED heat sink apparatuses.